The Cashen Course

It’s simple really, if the Cashen Course at Ballybunion Golf Club was anywhere else it would attract far more attention and plaudits than it does. It’s hard on a girl if her older sister is Sophia Loren!

Although built on similar, stirring terrain to The Old Course in the 1980s, in many ways ‘The Cashen’ is more irascible, more spectacular, more flirtatious, more brutal and more unforgiving and more difficult to tame than her older, more famous sibling.

In a strong wind, ‘Miss Cashen’ verges on being impossible – her dunes are higher, her valleys are deeper, her greens more undulating. The links changes mood unrecognizably from one day to the next.

The Old Course requires shot-making, placement and trajectory control. The Cashen Course requires acute precision especially off the tee as fairways frequently disappear around corners. The careless can easily run out of fairway and find their golf ball buried in marram. It’s a wonderful challenge from start to finish.

Designed by Robert Trent Jones Senior, opened in 1982.

To read Robert Trent Jones Sr.’s own hole by hole description of the Cashen Course, please click here.